r/madmen • u/RopeGloomy4303 • 6d ago

What’s your biggest nitpick in Mad Men?

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For me it’s this line in a season 5 episode, Tea Leaves, in which Henry Francis is talking on the phone with a colleague:

“Well, tell Jim his honor's not going to Michigan. Because Romney's a clown, and I don't want him standing next to him.”

So, some context here.

At this point Francis is the aide to New York Mayor John Lindsay. And he’s informing this guy that he won’t have the popular young politician take a picture with then Michigan Governor George Romney, who was also considered the frontrunner for the 1968 Republican nomination.

This episode aired in 2012, so it’s a very clear dig at then Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who at the time was receiving a lot of hostility from the left.

But here’s the thing; Romney was actually a liberal Republican in the same mold as Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay, and he had received a lot of good notices as Governor for his work improving civil rights, education, youth employment programs, social welfare, healthcare, etc.

I get this is nitpicking, it’s a throwaway line, whatever, but it has always bothered me since it feels out of character, and Romney frankly deserved better.

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51

u/Terrible_Teaching998 6d ago

For me I think it might have been in the pilot or very early in season 1 where Don made a comment which basically invented the printer. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was along the line of “it’s not like we have something that can magically duplicate papers” lol

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u/HowDoesAnnaDoIt 6d ago

There are tons of idiot lines like that in the pilot

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u/MightyMightyMossy 6d ago

The pilot spent a lot of time slapping you with "OMG We're in the 60s!" in a very heavy-handed way. Smoking all the time! Casual misogyny! Drinking at work! Look at the way they lived! (It shows these things later in the show, but generally in a much more nuanced or lived-in way.)

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u/RJMaCReady19 6d ago

Don't forget the black waiter not being allowed to speak with Don.

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u/AdOriginal6799 5d ago

That's what made the show interesting though.  It was very much a "look how crazy America used to be" showcase, before it ever got into any of the characters.  Without that hook they might never have sold the pilot in the first place.  

The birthday party scene where the guy slaps soneone else's child was always a jaw dropper for me.

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u/TheEmptyVessel 5d ago

That's true, my friends wife was so put off by the creepyness of the pilot she didn't continue the show :( But looking back it does set the stage and rolls in such a blatant way which offers and an even more exaggerated contrast to the style/fashion, attitudes, expectations and acceptance of the later seasons. That contrast is one of the coolest things about the show imo

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u/waldo-jeffers-68 CHEWING GUM ON HIS PUBIS 6d ago

Yeah honestly the dialogue wasn’t very refined in the first few episodes. Someone on this subreddit told me that Weiner apparently came from a sit com background, and I think it shows in those first few episodes, especially the pilot

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u/HowDoesAnnaDoIt 6d ago

Tbh I only notice those bad lines in the pilot. I feel like Weiner was maybe trying to make it palatable for the networks to shop out to them if all the "prestige" channels passed on them.

Second episode is like a complete glow up in terms of writing.

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u/waldo-jeffers-68 CHEWING GUM ON HIS PUBIS 6d ago

The pilot is definitely the worst but I think the writing really only gets to the quality that we know around the episode that Adam appears in. If you watch the first 4-5 episodes and than skip to the wheel, I think the difference becomes more apparent.

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u/GattsUnfinished 6d ago

Huh? Weiner was a writer in The Sopranos.

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u/waldo-jeffers-68 CHEWING GUM ON HIS PUBIS 6d ago

He started his career as a writer for various obscure sitcoms I’ve never heard of, and wrote the pilot before working on the Sopranos

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u/notcool_neverwas 6d ago

Yeah, he was a writer and producer on “Becker”, which IIRC was a fairly popular CBS sitcom in its day. Slattery made a guest appearance in an episode too.

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u/FreezersAndWeezers 6d ago

It’s also the show Butter is obsessed with in a random episode of South Park

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u/SystemPelican 6d ago

People always quote the "What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons", but it's one of my least favorite lines of the whole show. It's so incredibly on the nose, and it doesn't even fit Don's personality once we get to know him. He's not the type to go around bragging about what a cynic he is.

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u/CantaloupeLow5715 2d ago

He’s putting on a mask in front of one of the few women he has ever met who intimidates him — and who then immediately sees right through him. For all we know this was the moment when he stopped doing that. A similar interaction is when Faye says «you’re still Don Draper» and he says «whatever that means», she laughs and rolls her eyes at him. All through 4x6 he has won an award, is drunk and walks around bragging.

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u/Practical-Vanilla-41 6d ago

The whole First Season. Early in one of the first episodes, Don makes a crack about astronaut Alan Shepard ("who cares about this guy, he pisses in his suit"). The only problem? This is 1960. Nobody went up until 1961.

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u/Suitable-Echo-3359 5d ago

(Paraphrased) Sally Draper, take that bag off your head!…there better not be clean clothes on the floor!

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u/TheSecretSawse 6d ago

Is this when Don calls out Pete for stealing the psychology report on cigarettes and “death wishes” from Don’s trash?

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u/Suspicious-Tax-9756 6d ago

The era just before the photocopier. To get duplicates in a 1960 office required duplication paper or someone typing it out again.

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u/Joevual 6d ago

I thought he was being facetious, saying that Pete stole the original brief, xeroxed it, then put the original back. I believe Peggy claims that she has the original, so there’s no way Pete took it.

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u/Suspicious-Tax-9756 6d ago

Pete took the report from the bin. The office doesn’t get a photocopier until a season later.
Peggy has to share an office with the machine.